Donskoi delivers shootout winner
Sharks wing Joonas Donskoi wasn’t very happy with his overall game Thursday. He felt he had to make up for a tripping penalty that led to Calgary’s second goal of the first period.
Everything turned out all right in the end.
Donskoi scored the winning goal in a shootout, and the Sharks rallied to beat the Flames 3-2 on Thursday at SAP Center for their third straight victory.
“You’ve got to put some streaks together,” said Sharks center Joe Pavelski, who scored his eighth goal of the season. “To win three in a row, you can’t be satisfied. You’ve got to go for four or five. I don’t know if this is the time or not; hopefully you can start creating a little separation.”
The Sharks were stymied for most of the night by goalie David Rittich, but they got a late goal in the third period on Timo Meier’s redirected shot.
Pavelski, who scored San Jose’s first goal, got the puck past Rittich in the first round of the shootout. After Calgary missed its first two attempts, Donskoi deked Rittich and then wrapped a shot around the goalie for the winner.
It was a welcome sight for Donskoi, whose tripping penalty set up a power-play goal by Mikael Backlund.
“That’s a pretty big penalty to take, especially so when they score a PP goal after that,” Donskoi said. “It never feels good. I didn’t feel good about my game today at all. Good we got two points.”
Martin Jones made 32 saves for San Jose. Both teams missed multiple scoring chances in the extra period, including a onetimer by Calgary’s TJ Brodie that was stopped by Jones.